How 'Legend' Star Tom Hardy Ended Up Playing Gangster Twins
When Tom Hardy met with director Brian Helgeland (42) to discuss a role in the period biopic/gangster film Legend (in theaters Friday), the actor and filmmaker had two different roles in mind. (Watch our interview with them above.) The film focuses on Ronnie and Reggie Kray, volatile twin brothers and gangsters in 1960s England. Hardy wanted to play Ronnie, the unpredictable and frequently violent brother, while Helgeland saw him more as Reggie, the more handsome and suave of the pair.
“Basically at the end, he said ‘I’ll give you Reggie if you give me Ron,’ which had its definite attraction to it,” Helgeland told Yahoo Movies about the decision to let Hardy play both roles.
Hardy, for his part, was not all that intimidated by the assignment. “It’s something people do on stage — you can play 2 or 3 characters on stage. It’s not too difficult to play 2, 3, 4 characters, to change on a dime. On film, it’s how do you get them to be alive in a scene so that the action is fluid, and the motion is fluid, and people are engrossed in a story as opposed to a gimmick.”
The film has received mixed reviews, but Hardy has gotten nothing but raves for his double dip performance — no surprise for a guy who can play psychopaths (Bronson) and anchor an entire film from the front seat of a car (Locke).
